Excessive use of land by automobiles

For comparison, a man occupies about 5 square feet of space when he is walking. A car occupies about 350 square feet when it is standing still (including access); and at 30 miles an hour, when cars are 3 lengths apart, it occupies about 1000 square feet. Most of the time, cars have a single occupant. This means that when people use cars, each person occupies almost 100 times as much space as he does when he is a pedestrian. It is also notable in cities that when the area devoted to parking is too great, it destroys the land. Empirical observations suggest that an environment is not fit for human use when more than 9% of it is given over to parking. Another factor in the use of land by the automobile concerns the amount of paved road and highway that becomes necessary for its use. For example, in downtown Los Angeles more than 65% of the land is covered with concrete or asphalt paving. In Houston there are 30 parking spaces for every resident.